targeting, rhetoric and the failure of grassroots jihad

7/31/2019 Targeting, Rhetoric and the Failure of Grassroots Jihad

1/12

Targeting, Rhetoric and the Failure of Grassroots Jihadby Gilbert Ramsay

In this paper I examine the apparent failure of Al Qaeda ideologues, not for want of trying, to incite

a widespread campaign of individual jihad. Not only are instances of genuinely leaderless

jihadist violence rare, they also tend to be more discriminate and less lethal in their targeting than

the operations which Al Qaeda expresses a discursive preference for, and which it attempts to carry

out. I argue that an explanation for the rather constrained nature of grassroots jihadist violence can

be found, rather paradoxically, in the logic of collective action, which seems to underlie the

rhetorical attempts of jihadist ideologues to incite violence. I then briefly examine the possible

implications of this for understanding what makes for a successful leaderless terrorist campaign.

ihadist terrorism is supposed to be the pre-eminent threat to the security of Western countries.

But it is a threat that, despite the very real and terrible suffering and loss experienced by the

victims of those attacks which have taken place, is looking increasingly hollow. To some

extent, of course, the prospect of an unstoppable wave of carnage by Islamist radicals has

been a self-denying prophecy, since it has led governments to allocate enormous resources to

preventing it. Even so, this is not quite explanation enough. Because a major part of the discourse

about the Al Qaeda threat has been premised on the idea that Al Qaeda like ArnoldSchwarzeneggers mercurial antagonist in Terminator 2 was such a supple and sophisticated

opponent that it would render old-fashioned counter-terrorism techniques useless. Having mutated

into an ideology, a youth movement,[1] a brand,[2] a meme,[3] a way of working,[4] it was

no longer possible to stop Al Qaeda just by wiretapping and arresting people. Because as long as the

groups ideology retained its appeal, terrorists would continue to spontaneously generate, bursting

out violently where they were least expected.

If grass roots jihad actually did work this way, it would indeed be difficult to stop. While the idea

that anyone can make an effective bomb simply by following instructions downloaded from the

Internet now looks increasingly implausible, there are still plenty of readily imaginable ways in

which a person, were he solely motivated by the aim of achieving terror and devastation. As the Al

Qaeda ideologue Adam Gadahn has observed, there are many American states in which firearms are

freely available.[5] A person prepared to fire even a handgun at close range into the crowd in a

shopping mall could cause significant amounts of death and injury and certainly widespread terror.

For those to whom firearms are not so readily available, the material culture of modern life would

still seem to afford plenty of lethal options. There are, for example, plenty of ways to kill with a car

or a larger vehicle and, without being too specific, there are various other types of machinery freely

available which could quite readily be used to lethal effect.

In reality, jihadist terrorism as it has actually occurred in Western countries has been a much more

limited phenomenon than apocalyptic pronouncements suggested it would be. It has been limited in

two senses. Most obviously, the number of actually attempted attacks has been limited and the

number of attacks which were in any sense successful more limited still. By a generous definition ofsuccess, there have to date been twelve successful jihadist attacks on Western soil since 9/11, of

which only four killed more than two people, and a further four of which killed no one at all.

JTR Volume 3, Issue 1 - Summer 2012 27


2/12


3/12

difGicult.Withtheavailablemeans,smallgroupscouldprovetobeafrighteninghorrorfor

theAmericansandtheJews.[9]

The methods which Al-Zawahiri is speaking of here, writing in 2002, are realistically simple.

However, the basic purpose of the campaign he envisages is the same as that the much more

ambitious martyrdom bombings which Al Qaeda leaders have called for on other occasions such as,

for example, Bin Ladins speech responding to the invasion of Iraq. It is an indiscriminate campaign

of killing and destruction aimed at causing a frightening horror for the Americans and the Jews.

[10]

Al Zawahiris exhortation anticipates the rather more detailed recommendations of Abu Musab al-

Suri, who, in The Global Islamic Resistance Call, calls for attacks on a wide range of specific

Western targets, including political leaders, industrial centers, military bases, information networks,

the media, tourist hotspots, and so on.[11] However, despite the range of targets, Al-Suri is, again,quite clear about the basic point of carrying out attacks, which he sees as straightforwardly coercive

in aim. With the exception of Jews, whom Al-Suri apparently sees as intrinsically deserving of

being targeted anywhere other than in synagogues, there purpose of attacks is, again, not to punish

particular individuals, but rather to exert pressure on governments to withdraw their forces from

Muslim lands.

Interestingly, during his time with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Anwar al-Awlaqi seems to

have influenced a slightly though not entirely different set of targeting priorities. The air freight

bomb package plot of which Al-Awlaqi was an important part looks like an attempt to please

multiple competing interests in terms of targeting priority. It was aimed simultaneously at the

American economy, at president Obama via an attack on his home city, and at two synagogues, oneof which was a conservative congregation with the word Zion in its name, and the other

specialized in serving for gay and lesbian Jews.[12] Al Awlaqi also gave much more attention to

cultural issues than other major Al Qaeda ideologues have characteristically done. While Bin Ladin

and al-Zawahiri did issue threats against Denmark in response to the so-called cartoons

controversy, they did not address the subject at any great length. Moreover, up to this point,

blasphemy against Islam did not figure as a theme of any significance in Al Qaeda targeting

discourse, despite the fact that, since the Rushdie Affair, which remained in the headlines through

the 1990s, they could not have been unaware of it as an issue. Finally, the violent response they

advocated remained essentiallystrategic in character the indiscriminate targeting of Denmark as a

whole. By contrast Al-Awlaqi and his associates not only devoted a great deal of attention to the

issue through speeches such as The Dust will Never Settle Down and a special section ofInspiremagazine,[13] they also made a point of emphasising the targeting of cartoonists as individuals.

This is of course not to say that Al-Awlaqi did not also call for indiscriminate attacks on civilians

quite the contrary. But the possibility of more expressive forms of violent action as an addition to

the targeting repertoire of the global jihad seems to have a higher priority in his work.

By contrast, truly indiscriminate attacks on ordinary civilians are a surprisingly limited part of the

overall set of attacks attempted by jihadist terrorists in the West. Moreover, where there have been

serious attempts (successful or otherwise) at such attacks, it has usually turned out that relatively

formal organisations based in the so-called lands of jihad have played are fairly significant role in

making them happen. This has turned out to be the with regard to the Madrid and London

bombings, as well as, for example, the transatlantic liquid bomb plot and the Times Squareattempted bombing. Genuine, credible, self-starter attempts at mass casualty bombings by jihadists



4/12

in the West are, to say the least, few and far between, although the 21/7 attacks would seem to be an

example.[14]

Indeed, jihadist attacks in the West appear to clump broadly into two types. The first are actual orattempted mass casualty bombings, often but by no means always intended as suicide operations

and directed at ordinary civilians and public infrastructures. These operations, as just stated, almost

always involve training and perhaps even command and control from abroad. The second type of

operation is typically carried out using firearms, and is usually directed against targets which are in

some sense discriminately selected, most commonly soldiers. These attacks tend not to involve

foreign travel, training or direction, and the target may be quite opportunistically selected.

It is worth observing at this point that attacking soldiers based in their home countries (which would

account for all but one of the incidents in which soldiers have been attacked by jihadists in the

West), while it might appear to be in keeping with the strategic framing which Al Qaeda tends to

give its calls for individual jihad, is arguably not an optimal choice from Al Qaedas point of view.Attacking soldiers, while it may provoke outrage, is not likely to provoke widespread fear in a

civilian population. Moreover, where soldiers are already committed to a conflict and are therefore

risking their lives as a matter of course on the battlefield, it is highly unlikely that the death of a few

of them at home will exert pressure on political leaders to bring them back.

Indeed, a careful examination of what jihadist targeting discourses have to say about attacks on

soldiers and army bases in Western countries would seem to reinforce this. Al Suri, for instance, in

calling for attacks on army bases, specifies particularly that these would ideally be directed against

American troops stationed abroad (presumably in the hope that such attacks would be more likely to

actually prompt a withdrawal).[15] Similarly, in praising the actions of Fort Hood shooter Nidal

Malik Hassan, Adam Gadahn asks (perhaps a little ruefully) why similar actions are not beingundertaken against American army bases in Arabic countries.[16] Naturally, Al Qaedas leaders are

not likely to turn up their noses at a domestic attack on US soldiers which falls into their laps, but

there seems little reason to think that such attacks are a matter of particular priority for them to the

extent that they are able to choose.

How can we make sense of all this? Decentralised, networked, even leaderless terrorism can be

understood as a particularly extreme form of collective action dilemma. On the one hand, the

individual is being asked to carry out a particularly risky and costly form of action. On the other, the

ability of the organisation to compensate or exert pressure on him or her is virtually nil. It therefore

lies at the very edge of what models of human behaviour can explain. The theorist must either

accept a version of rationality bounded by a set of boundaries so bespoke as to seem almost

arbitrary or, alternatively, to abandon any attempt at understanding the actions attempted as rational

and look to some other model instead.

Amongst attempts to understand terrorist actions through a rational choice framework at the

individuallevel, we find the integrated framework proposed by Dipak K. Gupta,[17] who in

calling for an extension of rational actor theory to encompass the need to belong essentially seems

to be reinventing certain versions of the notion of bounded rationality.[18] In doing so, Gupta not

only sacrifices the precision of neoclassical views of rational action, but also fails to provide

anything more than a rather vague appeal to intra-group dynamics to replace it. Guptas work

references and otherwise recalls that of Sageman, but Sageman, who commits himself to middle

range analysis simply refuses to engage seriously with the level of the individual.[19] Sagemans

bunch of guys often seems to be a black box out of which radical behaviour simply emerges,without even a clear sense of the ingredients that went into it, let alone the mechanisms that forged

them into terrorist action.



5/12

A more intellectually satisfying approach is to be found in the work of Eli Berman,[20] who,

following micro-economically focused rational choice theorists of religion like Bainbridge and

Stark [21] and particularly Laurence Iannacone,[22] argues that religious terrorism and behaviourslike suicide bombing are to be understood as by products of organisations which have evolved to

deal effectively with the free rider problem in an environment otherwise highly conducive to

corruption and defection. These organisations demand that people conform to a particularly

stringent set of ideological conditions in order to weed out those who are not seriously committed.

This makes them better able to provide for those who are within the charmed circle, which in turn

provides an incentive for a rational, self-regarding actor to conform. But while Bermans work is

interesting with regard to groups such as the Taliban or Hamas, he is, as he admits, at a loss to

explain how a much looser entity like Al Qaeda functions, except to suggest that it parasitically

recruits from previously radicalized and committed individuals.

This line of argument would bring us, with regard to Western contexts, to the work along the lines

of that performed by Quintan Wiktorowicz on the movementAl Muhajiroun in the UK.[23] Al

Muhajiroun were not explicitly committed to carrying out acts of terrorism and in Wiktorowiczs

judgement this commitment was genuine. However, the movement did help to overcome some of

the obstacles to jihadist mobilization by separating people from the support networks and social

capital offered by mainstream society, systematically indoctrinating them with an ideological

outlook closely related to Al Qaedas, creating a close-knit group of like minded activists, and

getting them used to engaging in regular, somewhat risky, political activities together.

Wiktorowiczs analysis of Al-Muhajiroun presents the group as not dissimilar from a New

Religious Movement in the way it started by exploiting cognitive openings in potential recruits,

before getting them involved in a set of behavioural processes aimed at causing them to gradually

sink more and more costs into the movement, on the one hand by encouraging them to devote verylarge amounts of time and effort to the groups study sessions while, as a corollary, sacrificing

ordinary work and leisure opportunities.

The problem with Wiktorowiczs work for understanding leaderless jihad is mainly that it is an

account of how people joined Al-Muhajiroun, not an account of how people come to be involved in

jihadism per se. Indeed, he points out that while Muhajiroun were operating in the UK, they

acknowledged the jihadist to represent a rival, alternative option for radical Muslims, alongside

the salafists and Hizb al-Tahrir.[24] While some of those who got involved in jihadist plots have

had histories of involvement with specific radical groups like Al Muhajiroun, this is by no means

uniformly the case. On the other hand, even for people who have reached the point of being active

members of a group like Al Muhajiroun it still remains very unlikely that they will actually go on tobe involved in an act of terrorism. Even so, Wiktorowiczs conceptualization offers a significantly

more insight into individual processes of radicalisation than do those we have just surveyed. His

model of involvement in Al Muhajiroun is a perfect example of bounded rationality at work,

whereby information asymmetries and human cognitive biases (like the sunk costs fallacy) work in

conjunction with issue framing to produce collective action.

Given the looser nature of global jihadism, and the necessarily more spontaneous and informal

forms of mobilization it employs, theories of collective action framing as originally put forward by

Benford and Snow have come to be seen as particularly useful in understanding how influences

such as radical propaganda might serve to move people towards violent action.[25] Even where

framing theory is not explicitly drawn on, terms which recall the theory like discussions of which

narratives resonate are often deployed in discussing the effect of such content. However, the

problem with such loose usages is that they often seem to treat framing as if it were simply another,

more academically correct way to talk about the commonsense idea that radical ideas make people



6/12

do radical things. In fact, as understood within social movement theory, framing is a rather subtler

process. It works not by giving people a new set of beliefs as such (while not all theorists of

collective action framing agree on the precise difference between framing and ideology, all seem toagree that they are not the same thing),[26] but rather by causing people, within more or less pre-

existing belief structures to see a certain issue in a different way. For instance, framing the Bosnian

civil war as an attack on Muslims by Christians, rather than an attack on one former Yugoslav

ethnic group by another.

The tendency to see jihadist radicalisation as a rather passive process resulting from the

consumption of radical narratives has achieved perhaps its most rigorous formulation in the rapid

evidence assessment of Al Qaeda influenced radicalisation conducted on behalf of the UK Home

Office by the criminologists Per-Olof Wikstrm and Nomie Bouhana.[27] In this review, the

authors propose to understand the phenomenon through a theory called situational action theory.

Situational action theory represents almost the perfect opposite end of the spectrum from

neoclassical ideas of rational choice in so far as it conceives of human behaviour as primarily rule

guided, with rational maximization of utility sidelined almost completely. Accordingly, Bouhana

and Wikstrm interpret jihadist radicalisation almost as a public health issue, whereby individuals

with certain forms of vulnerability are more susceptible than others to falling prey to a narrative

which causes them to perceive terrorist acts as viable action possibilities.

This approach, it seems to me, suffers from an opposite problem to that faced by rational choice

theories in seeking to explain radicalisation into jihadist terrorism. Whereas theories founded on a

more or less classical conception of rational choice struggle to explain why people would carry out

acts of terrorism at all, theories based on the idea that people act according to linguistically scripted

rules seem to me to suffer from an opposite problem: they fail to accommodate the possibility of

conflicts of interest between jihadist radicals and the Al Qaeda at the strategic level.

What I would propose is that we can arrive at a more nuanced alternative model more capable of

accommodating individual agency by looking back at the actual implications of framing theory.

Framing is, albeit in a slightly different sense to that used in the social movement literature, an

essential concept to the idea of bounded rationality as set out originally by Amos Tversky and

Daniel Kahneman.[28] This is, in their work, because humans happen to have cognitive biases

which mean that they consistently prefer one logically identical situation over another depending on

how the two situations are presented to them (the glass half full is better than the glass half empty,

saving the lives of 25% of a group is better than letting 75% of a group die). However, it may be

suggested that it is also for a more universal and metaphysical reason, namely, that reason needs

something to be reasonable about. A person who has read and taken to heart the book ofEcclesiastes may, for example, despair of life and consider everything to be mere vanity. If such a

person then loses the will to eat, drink or look after his personal hygiene he is not being irrational.

Rather, he is rationally acting (or not acting) within a different set of framing assumptions from

someone who subscribes to the idea that life is worth living, and human company worth keeping.

As, for example, the anthropologist George Marcus notes in this exploration of the idea of affective

citizenship, emotion is not so much an obstacle to the action of reason, as a requirement for it to

operate.[29]

By inviting a person to frame an issue differently, then, what one is doing is not so much demanding

of her that she a in a particular way, but rather creating for her a different set of subjectively

perceived goods to rationally pursue. To provide an example of what this might mean in practice,consider concepts such as glory or honour. These notions are wholly socially constructed. But to

those who accept the ideological system which grants them meaning they are real enough.



7/12

Moreover, once they are brought into being, they acquire a reality which may go beyond the

interests of those behind the ideological system which brings them into being. For example, the

commander of an army might find it useful to inculcate a notion of glory in his soldiers as a way ofgetting them to do things in the absence of more concrete incentives. However, once established,

there might well be situations in which the pursuit of glory would lead soldiers to act in ways that

were counterproductive to the strategic interests of the army.

Indeed, if we look at the discourses which are used by Al Qaedas central leadership, as well as

other entrepreneurs of global jihad, in an attempt to incite Muslims to take part in acts of so-called

individual terrorism, there does indeed appear to be a clear recognition that the people they are

addressing are rational actors who make active choices between the costs and benefits associated

with pursuing subjectively constructed goods. Thus we find that discourses seeking to mobilise

people to individual jihad pursue two main rhetorical strategies. First, they try to emphasise the

benefits and downplay the costs of involvement in acts of individual terrorism, as well as to

emphasise the merits of carrying out operations in the West over alternative courses of action, such

as travelling to fight abroad. Second, they try to encourage less costly activities of roughly

escalating intensity, such as participating in boycotts, supporting prisoners, participating in

propaganda work, fundraising and physical preparation.[30] It is also worth pointing out that some

of these activities (e.g. supporting prisoners) can also be seen as attempts, albeit limited, to offset

some of the costs of involvement in jihadist activity by promoting a wider community of support.

Indeed, in certain places, these calls to arms seem to reveal an acute awareness to some of the major

obstacles to engagement as, for instance, where Adam Gadahn makes the following rather

unconvincing attempt to downplay the significance of being imprisoned for terrorist offences.

And I would like this note of reassurance and encouragement: if it is Allahs will that you be

captured, then its not the end of the world, and it doesnt necessarily mean that youre going tospend the rest of your life in prison. And in fact, let me tell you something: over these past few

years I have seen the release of many, many Mujahideen whom Id never even dreamed that they

would regain their freedom. Yet, as I speak, now theyre back home with their families or back on

the frontlines fighting the enemies. So, the unbelievers plot, and Allah plots, and Allah is the best

of plotters, and he is the best of guardians and protectors, and he is the one who answers the one in

need when he calls on him.[31]

What might these discourses have to tell us about the limitations to grassroots jihadist targeting

observed above? Firstly, we can observe an obvious contradiction which, so it seems, jihadists are

themselves aware of and find troubling. If it is indeed possible to participate in jihad by non-violent

means, then were does this leave the individual obligation to participate in jihad? As Abu Musabal-Suri observes, many are needed to fight, and only relatively few to carry out acts such as

propaganda.[32] Moreover, Al-Suri actually seeks to discourage propagandists from getting

involved in violence on the grounds that doing so represents a threat to operational security. And

yet, viewed as a process of engagement, lower risk actions such as propaganda are also apparently

recognised by jihadists as a necessary transitional step on the way to physical involvement. Thus

those who would seem to be the candidates most likely to be committed to violent action are

precisely those whom al-Suri discourages from involvement and who also, on that account, possess

a useful rationale for not being so involved. Moreover, since the jihad is, in reality, not a

hierarchical army capable of assigning its recruits to roles by some rational process, there is no way

to say for the case of a given individual that their actions are superfluous and therefore do not

amount to discharging the duty of jihad.



8/12

Thus, rather than fulfilling their function of inciting people to action, jihadist discourses aimed at

recruitment seem to contain within them the possibility of relatively stable, long term, behaviourally

non-violent engagement. Moreover, another aspect of jihadist attempts at incitement would alsoappear to offer an explanation for why jihadists operating alone or as unsupported self-starter cells

would be likely to choose more expressive and discriminate targets. This is that, in attempting to

argue for the benefits of individual action to the individual, there is a tendency for jihadist discourse

to emphasise religious and spiritual justifications more than the collective, strategic justifications

characteristically provided by the Al Qaeda leaderships official discourse. A good example of this

are the first two distinctively jihadi pieces of work produced by Anwar al-Awlaqi.[33] Indeed

these texts are arguably doubly interesting in so far as they not only provide examples of a skilled

and experienced ideologue trying to incite violence in an audience he knew well, but also, perhaps,

some insight into the radicalisation process which he himself was going through at this point as he

moved away from an explicit stance in favour of peaceful, if culturally distant coexistence between

Muslim minority populations and the other inhabitants of countries they lived in towards an attitudein favour of all out war in such contexts. As such, it is telling that Al-Awlaqis first two texts were

commentaries first on a book by the medieval embattled scholar Ibn Nuhas, the title of which

translates roughly as Water Holes for the Feelings of Longing for the Battlefields of the Dear

Companions and the more contemporary Constants in the Practice of Jihadby the deceased former

leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Yusuf al-Uyayri. In both works the emphasis is very

heavily on, as Al-Awlaqi puts it in the latter work, jihad as a good in its own self. In both, violent

jihad is presented as a spiritual struggle in which victory is ultimately not of this world, but rather is

achieved through the mujahids victory over the temptations of earthly pleasures.

Formulated in this way as a spiritual quest rather than the instrumental practice of a strategic

campaign the targeting priorities of jihadist violence would appear to look somewhat different.Most importantly, the kinds of attack which have come to be seen as paradigmatic of Al Qaeda

indiscriminate mass casualty suicide bombings move from being of central importance to being

permissible, but suboptimal courses of action. Consider, for example, what Abu Muhammad al-

Maqdisi, probably the pre-eminent example of a contemporary jihadi scholar, has to say about the

permissibility of suicide operations.

IdisagreewiththosewhoregarditassuicideandthattheEffortshouldbemadeinusing

thelatesttechnologicalmethodslikeremotecontrolbombingdeviceswhichminimisethe

numberofvictimsintheranksofthemujahidin,forthisisobligatoryuponthemifitis

attainable.

Theoperationsshouldfocusonmilitarytargetswhichdistresstheenemyandshould

manifesttheradiantimageofIslamicJihadbyavoidingintentionalkillingofchildrenand

theirlike

ThemotivebehindsuchoperationsshouldbetoestablishatrulyimportantbeneGit,orto

repelatrueblightthatcannotberepelledinanyotherway.executorisdecreedto

hellGirehowever,whatshouldbenotedisthattherearegeneral,literalevidencethat

forbidsself-killingunderanycircumstance,evenifwasnotduetotheabovementioned



9/12

incentivesIdirectedtheyouthwhoareinchargeofsuchoperationstostudythematter

legallyandseriously[34]

He goes on to insist on a set of conditions for the justifiable use of the operational method:

1. Effort should be made in using the latest technological methods like remote control bombing

devices which minimise the number of victims in the ranks of the mujahidin, for this is

obligatory upon them if it is attainable.

2. The operations should focus on military targets which distress the enemy and should manifest

the radiant image of Islamic Jihad by avoiding intentional killing of children and their like

3. The motive behind such operations should be to establish a truly important benefit, or to repel a

true blight that cannot be repelled in any other way.

The point is that Al-Maqdisi sees suicide bombing, both in its suicidal and its indiscriminatefeatures not as impermissible, but as very much outside normative ideal of jihadist violence.

Considered from the point of view of a rational actor then, albeit one whose rationality is bounded

by the jihadist frame, one who is likely to get just one attempt at fighting jihad, it is not hard to see

why such an action would not necessarily be seen as optimal. By contrast, actions which are clearly

meaningful and just killing soldiers, or clearly defined enemies of Islam precisely those

actions which account for most acts by genuine grassroots jihadists can readily be seen as, from an

individualistic point of view, as attractive targets.

As a final thought, it is of interest to consider whether the contradictions which seem to limit the

success of attempts by Al Qaeda more broadly by global jihadist ideologues to inspire individual

jihad are inevitably flawed, or whether it might, after all, be possible to build a more successful andtherefore threatening leaderless campaign within the jihadist framework. One interesting common

feature of most jihadist discourses which seem to be aimed at inspiring individual action is a

recognition that the potential range of targets and methods for violent action is extremely broad.[35]

Indeed, as attempts to incite violence, jihadist discourses produced by established ideologues are

often surprisingly vague on the specific sorts of violence one might attempt, providing long lists of

often generic targets rather than specific, focused targets with clear explanations of why attacking

them is so worthwhile. To this there is one particular and rather interesting exception which I have

already mentioned Al-Awlaqis cartoons campaign. Here, a very specific type of target is

mentioned. Indeed,Inspire Magazine actually goes further, by listing the names of specific

individuals. This sort of campaign is interesting in so far as it seems to bear a close resemblance to

other campaigns of leaderless resistance such as those of the Earth Liberation Front, the AnimalLiberation Front and, perhaps most relevant to our purposes, campaigns of anti-Abortion extremism

fronted by ideological brand names like the Army of God.[36]

While, clearly, there is not space for anything more than the briefest sketch here, comparing anti-

blasphemer violence by jihadists, and anti-abortion violence by militant Christians on the one hand,

and the more normal targeting discourses of jihadist militancy on the other is instructive. In the

former case, it can be observed that not only is the target of the proposed violence made clear from

the outset but, moreover, both the ideological and instrumental purpose of the attack is clearly

encoded in the act itself. When an abortion providing doctor is murdered, or an abortion clinic is

attacked; or when a blaspheming cartoonist is murdered, or a blaspheming magazine office burned

there is no need to provide further ideological explanation of the attackers purpose or what he wastrying to achieve. Indeed, such attacks are often recorded in databases simply as abortion related.

[37] The ideology of the attack is encoded in the action. Moreover within the action there is a clear



10/12

convergence of instrumental, ethical, and group-solidarity forming rationales: killing doctors who

provide abortions is a good way of making abortion less available generally;[38] it is

incontrovertibly just, provided that one accepts that abortion is murder and, moreover, for this veryreason, it sits at a cultural fault line: those who accept that abortion is murder and those who do not

may agree on many other matters; but this is a matter on which they can, for important reasons of

principle, neither agree nor agree to disagree. Again, while the case of the blaspheming cartoonist or

author is plainly less clear-cut, something roughly similar might be imagined to hold. The Western

Muslim who might agree with her fellow citizens on almost every other matter, might still not think

that the law should permit cartoons which insult her religion. A liberal citizen of a Western country

who might think of himself as generally tolerant and broad minded might nonetheless view the right

to lampoon religion as sacrosanct.

What can we then learn from the story of so far at any rate the overall failure of Al Qaedas

attempts to instigate acts of individual jihad? Perhaps the most important observation is that the

dangerousness of a form of violent extremism is not necessarily proportional to the militancy of its

ideology, nor that the relationship between discourse and violent action can be seen as a simple

process of internalizing the explicit beliefs which the discourse teaches. Discourses also do things

and invite particular forms of engagement which, in turn, may make violent action more or less

plausible. Secondly, assessing the potential impacts of terrorism is about more than body count or

dollar count. Acts of terrorism where they are effective are themselves part of the cultural

discourse of violent extremism. They are acts in and on culture, and it is where they threaten to

strike areas of cultural criticality that they are of most real concern.

About the author:Dr Gilbert Ramsay recently completed his doctorate at the University of StAndrews, which examines the consumption of jihadist online content from a subcultural perspective.

He teaches and writes on jihadist ideology and culture, 'cyberterrorism' and 'terrorism on the

Internet' and online dimensions of counterterrorism policy. Themes in his present research interests

relate to the intersection of political movements with popular culture and fantasy, the politics of

individual excellence and virtue, the notion of the subcultural 'ethic' and subcultural perspectives

on understanding limitations to target choice and modus operandi by violent political movements.

Notes:

[1] Olivier Roy, Al Qaeda in the West as a Youth Movement: The Power of a Narrative, CEPS Policy Brief, No. 168, August 28,

2008

[2] Brian A. Jackson, Groups, Networks or Movements: A Command and Control Approach to Classifying Terrorist Organisations

and its Application to Al Qaeda, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2006

[3] H. Keith Henson, Sex, Drugs, and Cults. An evolutionary psychology perspective on why and how cult memes get a drug-like

hold on people, and what might be done to mitigate the effects. The Human Nature Review, 2, 2002, 344355

[4] Metropolitan Police commissioner Ian Blair, interviewed after the 7th July attacks in London

[5] AdamYahiya Gadahn, You are only responsible for yourself, 3rd June, 2011, available from http://www.globalterroralert.com/

al-qaida-leaders/834-as-sahab-media-you-are-held-responsible-only-for-thyself-part1-.html

[6] It is interesting to observe that even this protection does not just extend toMuslim religious leaders. Thus there is no apparent

contradiction in the thought of, e.g., Al-Suri or Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin, between calling for the deliberate targeting of Jewish people,

but disapproval of the targeting of Rabbis or synagogues. The reasoning seems to be that Islam is bound to tolerate Judaism as a

religion, but that Muslims as a nation are at war with Jews as a nation.

http://www.globalterroralert.com/al-qaida-leaders/834-as-sahab-media-you-are-held-responsible-only-for-thyself-part-1-.htmlhttp://www.globalterroralert.com/al-qaida-leaders/834-as-sahab-media-you-are-held-responsible-only-for-thyself-part-1-.htmlhttp://www.globalterroralert.com/al-qaida-leaders/834-as-sahab-media-you-are-held-responsible-only-for-thyself-part-1-.htmlhttp://www.globalterroralert.com/al-qaida-leaders/834-as-sahab-media-you-are-held-responsible-only-for-thyself-part-1-.htmlhttp://www.globalterroralert.com/al-qaida-leaders/834-as-sahab-media-you-are-held-responsible-only-for-thyself-part-1-.htmlhttp://www.globalterroralert.com/al-qaida-leaders/834-as-sahab-media-you-are-held-responsible-only-for-thyself-part-1-.htmlhttp://www.globalterroralert.com/al-qaida-leaders/834-as-sahab-media-you-are-held-responsible-only-for-thyself-part-1-.htmlhttp://www.globalterroralert.com/al-qaida-leaders/834-as-sahab-media-you-are-held-responsible-only-for-thyself-part-1-.html


11/12

[7] Usama bin Ladin, 9/11 Message to the American People, 13 September 2009

[8] Alex Schmid and Albert Jongman, Political Terrorism:A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Theories, Databases and

Literature, Amsterdam: Transaction, 2005, p. 3

[9] Ayman al-Zawhairi,Knights Under the Prophets Banner, (translated and partially condensed byAl Sharq al-Awsat) p. 62

[10] Usama bin Ladin, Message to Our Muslim Brothers in Iraq, 2003. This is specifically what Bin Ladin says on the subject: We

stress the importance of the martyrdom operations against the enemy - operations that inflicted harm on the United States and Israel

that have been unprecedented in their history, thanks to Almighty God.

[11] Mustafa Settmariam Nasar (Abu Musab al-Suri), The Global Islamic Resistance Call, p. 1389

[12]Inspire Magazine, no. 3, 2010

[13]Inspire Magazine, no. 1, 2010

[14] These remarks are based on ongoing research for the Home Office funded project Cultural Constraints on Jihadist Terrorism.However, for an example of how new information has dramatically changed our understanding about the role of central facilitation in

Al Qaeda attacks in Europe see Fernando Reinares, The Madrid Bombings and Global Jihadism, Survival, vol. 52, no. 2, 2010 pp.

83104

[15] The Global Islamic Resistance Call

[16] You are only held responsible for yourself

[17] Dipak K. Gupta, Towards and Integrated Framework for Analyzing Terrorism: Individual Motivations to Group Dynamics,

Democracy and Security, Vol. 1 No. 1, 2005, pp. 531

[18] For a useful review of theories of bounded rationality relevant to collective action see Karl Dieter Opp, Theories of Political

Protest and Social Movements: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Critique and Synthesis, London: Routledge, 2010, p. 38

[19] Marc Sageman,Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the 21st Century, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008

[20] Eli Berman,Radical, Religious and Violent, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2009

[21] Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge,A Theory of Religion, New York, P. Lang, 1987

[22] Laurence Iannacone, Why Strict Churches are Strong, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 99, No. 5, March 1994, pp. 1180

1211

[23] Quintan Wiktorowicz, Radical Islam Rising: Muslim Extremism in the West, Lanham, Rowmand and Littlefield, 2005

[24] ibid. p. 101

[25] See Robert Benford, Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,Annual Review of Sociology,

Vol. 26, August, 2010, pp. 611639

[26] See e.g. Pamela E. Oliver and Hank Johnston, What a Good Idea! Ideologies and Frames in Social Movement Research,

Mobilization: An International Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 2000, pp. 3754.

[27] Per Olof Wikstrm and Nomie Bouhana, Al Qaida Influenced Radicalisation: A Rapid Evidence Assessment Guided by

Situational Action Theory, Home Office, 2011

[28] Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, The Framing of decisions and the psychology of choice Science Vol. 211, 1981, pp.

453458.

[29] George Marcus, The Sentimental Citizen: Emotion in Democratic Politics, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press,

2002

[30] The obvious examples of this would be texts such as Isa bin Awshans 39 Ways to Serve Jihad and the Mujahidin and Anwar

al-Awlaqis adaptation of this, 44 Ways to Serve Jihad



12/12

[31] You are only held responsible for yourself(translation by Flashpoint Partners, 2011)

[32] The Global Islamic Resistance Call

[33] For a chronology of al-Awlaqis publications and their possible relationship to his own trajectory of radicalisation, see

Alexander Meleagrou Hitchens and Jacob Amis, The Making of the Christmas Day Bomber, Current Trends in Islamist Ideology,

Vo. 10, 2010

[34] This statement comes from an interview quoted in the introduction to the Al-Tibyan translation of Al-Maqdisis book, This is

Our Aqidah, available from www.tawhed.ws. In the remainder of the quotation, he is drawing on the Arabic text of his response to an

article published in the newspaperAl-Sharq Al-Awsatoffering an Islamic critique of the legitimacy of suicide operations.

[35] This point is made directly, for example, in Inspire 4 and, more directly, in Al-Awlaqis recently released posthumous piece on

targeting inInspire 8. It is also implicit in the very broad range of targets in, for example, The Global Islamic Resistance Callor Abd

al-Aziz al-Muqrins piece forAl-Battar Military Camp magazine, The Targets in Cities.

[36] According to Carol Mason the Army of God is simply a name used by certain radical anti-abortion activists as a collective cover

for their violent actions . See Carol Mason, Whos Afraid of Virginia Dare: Confronting Anti-Abortion Terrorism after 9/11,

website claiming to represent the entity still remains accessible at http://www.armyofgod.com/.

[37] This the case, for example in the Global Terrorism Database. http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/

[38] For an examination of the effects of anti-abortion violence on abortion provision see Mirelle Jacobson and Heather Royer,

Aftershocks: The Impact of Clinic Violence on Abortion Services, RAND Corporation, 7th July, 2010,Journal of Constitutional

Law, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2004, pp. 796817

http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/http://www.armyofgod.com/http://www.armyofgod.com/http://www.tawhed.ws/http://www.tawhed.ws/

targeting, rhetoric and the failure of grassroots jihad

Documents